March, 1966: The heart of a long cold winter. Collars up, boots out. Curbs of snowbanks and awnings of frost and a slow dragging about the frozen city. Dismal, if not for the blue beauty of the dipping mercury: shining streetlamp skies and breath bubbles between two sidewalk friends parting ways in the early evening, their engagement ended prematurely because of the shivering impossibility of the weather.

“Only a Yeti would be out on this kind of night.” Funny how whoever said that was right.

But some people had no choice. The rec centre — Mary McCormick on Brock Street — possessed that which a lot of the poor and working class homes did not: raging heat. Also, it was better to have little Johnny (Irish) or Frankie (Italian) or Baxter (West Indian) or Petr (Polish) running around kicking a ball against a wall than huddled in blankets trying to stay warm over his soup.

So despite the dead quiet streets and the freezing clench of winter on large families in small homes trying to suffer their way through the wretched season, the rec centre pulsed with light and warmth.

It was filled with children, maybe a few parents, although, back then, moms and dads were too busy working or at home preparing food or tending to smaller children to be standing around on the fringes of the parquet drinking coffees and talking about their kids’ aptitude for pretty much everything.

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In an instant, the gymnasium grew still. He stood in the doorway: tall and dark and strong, wearing a parka. He pulled his hood back. Everybody knew who he was.

Muhammad Ali was in town to fight George Chuvalo (“the old washerwoman,” he called the local fighter, mockingly). Why he walked into the rec centre, no one knows. Maybe it was planned, but maybe not. It seems unlikely they would have programmed him on this kind of night, and, besides, the word “programming” hadn’t yet become part of the superstar lexicon. Ali just did.

He moved here, there, especially in podunk 60s Toronto, where everyone was too busy not becoming a popsicle to worry too much about anything else.

He stood in the doorway, hundreds of small faces turning towards him. A ball rolled still in the corner. Ali unzipped his jacket, took off his gloves. He thrust a single finger in the air and announced, his voice booming across the floor: “I. Am the Heavyweight Champion. Of the world!”

I like to think of what the kids did next: how they ran to him and how someone — maybe Bundini Brown; or maybe this was before his time? — passed out 8x10s. Ali bent down and signed and then shadow-boxed with a tiny laughing girl in pigtails (there were no cameras, no CITY Pulse News team, because no photos exist of this event).

But what I like to think of beyond that are the homes in the neighbourhood surrounding the still-standing building (and adjoining rink): how people were doing as they did: struggling to fight from day to day through the winter while metres away stood the most famous man in the world, out on a cold night, doing as he did, too.

National Post

Dave Bidini is a Toronto author and musician

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In this occasional series, Dave Bidini unearths Toronto’s forgotten history

Guitarchives MusicLenny Breau.

In the 60s — maybe more than now, maybe less — every musician in Canada gravitated to Toronto to play and earn and stay busy year-round. This was as true for jobbing bands as it was for cultivated geniuses like Manitoba’s Lenny Breau. As impactful on his instrument as Glenn Gould was on his, Breau was a savant who dared to use his right hand as a way of sounding harmonics; using an elegant and composed sweeping technique in a time of slashing rock and roll players. Misunderstood as a person — and possibly bipolar — Breau fell victim to drug abuse and mostly wandered through a musical life that, nonetheless, left an everlasting impact on contemporarysounds. He spent some time in Toronto, and this is a postcard from that difficult era.

Lenny.

To K, he looked like a wraith in a trench coat standing there in the alcove of the Bay Street subway station; a warm and windy summer afternoon; the 70s sometime; long-hooded steel comfort cars cruising the city streets. K was going from here to there — session to session— one beige panelled recording studio to the next with names like Manta and Sounds Interchange and Eastern; great wide rooms built for orchestras but now filled with enormous rock drum ensembles — floor toms and ride cymbals and double bass drums — framed by the twin guitarists’ speaker cabinets the size of Georgian doors. This session was for a commercial: Kresges or K-Mart. Or Minute Maid. But it’s not what K remembered that day. It was Lenny. Reaching into his pocket looking for smokes he didn’t have.

Lenny probably had a session, too, but then again, maybe not. In the end, K never found out. Noticing him lurk in the crook of the alcove, K’s heart danced for a moment thinking that maybe he and Lenny would be sharing a session. The guitarist would have shuffled into the studio, nodded at the engineer, strode into the live room, let his coat fall to the floor, strapped on his headphones and made a twirling motion with his index finger: “Roll the track.” Staring into the infinity of a point in the hardwood of the floor, he’d have pressed his eyes shut, massaged the guitar’s fretboard with his right hand, and soon, notes would have appeared as if conjured out of nowhere. Then, he’d be gone, leaving the damp mist of greatness that followed him wherever he went.

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“Hey, Lenny. Hey, Lenny, man, it’s K,” said K, turning to the musician. K could tell that Lenny had no idea who he was, even though he’d known him for years; from Moncton dancehall days to cross-country caravans that dragged across every major city in Canada (which is to say: six stops). Lenny straddled his own frequency and moved at his own pace. When he looked at you, a prism of expressions moved across his face, and when he played, it was the same: jazz over swing over artfolk over a classical interpretation. Glenn Gould had his piano and Lenny had his guitar. Like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton, he’d been on the road forever playing music with his parents, who were travelling country artists. Out of this came some of the most unqiue music ever made. And he’d landed in Toronto. Sometimes strung out and sometimes just strange. Lenny. The monster could play although he did that less often.

“Lenny, it’s K,” repeated the singer. Lenny looked bad. He looked like he wasn’t even there; pale, thin, and wan. K remembered what someone else had once told him: “Never let Lenny into your bathroom. He’ll raid your medication, desperate for anything.” In the Bay Street station, Lenny looked stoned — slow, empty and stoned — and it made K sad, although he knew it was part of the life. “How you doing?” he asked Lenny, knowing the answer. Lenny looked at him. No, he looked through him. “Hey, man, can you lend me five bucks?” K reached into his pocket. He handed the guitarist the money. “And then,” remembered K. “SWOOSH! He was gone.”

In this occasional series, Dave Bidini unearths Toronto’s forgotten history: Toronto was once a rumour to the distant parts of Canada; its reputation echoing across the prairie and into the far north. Because summer was so busy here, rubes and podunks and straw-chewers were dispatched to help with the heavy lifting; leaving months and weeks later having experienced a kind of life they could only dream about while at home. This is one of those stories.

Harry Vold was what they used to call a “stock contractor”; someone who brokered horses and bulls; sometimes for sport; sometimes not. Years and years and years ago — 1963 — Harry shipped some of his prized beasts from his Alberta ranch to Toronto for something called “The Canadian Championship Rodeo” at Maple Leaf Gardens, a popular mid-summer attraction at the old arena, with a special appearance by Johnny Crawford of The Rifleman.

Not trusting the railway stiffs to handle his treasured animals, he asked the Sarcee (Tsuu T’ina) Chief Johnny Starlight to supply a few hands to accompany the stock to the big city, at least according to (the great) Gerry Barker of the Toronto Star.

Johnny told Harry that his son, Jimmy, would do it, and so would Rupert Crowchild; native kids who’d never been anywhere their entire lives, let alone into the grey sprawl of the teeming city. Still, they were cattle men, and they understood the significance of their cargo. Besides, they were Johnny’s boys. How much misadventure could happen on a one-way track from here to the centre of the universe?

Four days later — cruising past the golden prairie before winding into the torrent of Norther Ontario’s forests and rivers south towards the madness of the city — the trip had gone so well that the boys — sated after a half-week of boxed lunches, meals in the dining car, and beers before cards before bedtime — strolled along the railway platform and into the roaring city.

They grabbed each other at the elbow, astonished by the Royal York hotel; the lakefront; the chaos of King and Queen and north to Dundas. The city drew them in and they lost track of time. The day waned and evening took hold.

Stealing a glance at a clock in the window of the Simpsons department store, they grabbed each other a second time. Peeling south down Yonge street, they checked the schedule scroll at Union station. The animals had already left, heading west, to a place called Georgetown.

They hugged the shoreline of the lake. It was late, but still. The moon climbed over the boys’ shoulder until it disappeared. Jimmy and Rupert slept somewhere for what was probably too long; maybe in a park or maybe on a beach or maybe underneath a factory awning. They drank water from a fountain; stole bread from a delivery truck. The next day they walked some more. Eventually, they headed north. It’s what they had to do. They walked for two days before finding the railyard and the lowing of the animals. One of the boys would have to tell the Chief. It sure as Hell wasn’t going to be Rupert.